1450: Jack Cade, Irish-born physician, using the pseudonym Mortimer, led an insurrection march of 40,000 along Old Kent Road to London to protest about laws of Henry VI.

1693: The Ladies’ Mercury, the first magazine for women, was published.

1778: The Liberty Bell was moved back to Philadelphia after the British Army left.

1857: Massacre of Cawnpore, India, where British soldiers and male residents were executed after promise of safe conduct. 1858: Treaty of Tientsin ended war between Britain and China, whereby China opened additional ports to British commerce and legalised opium trade.

1937: Duke of Windsor married Mrs Wallis Warfield Simpson in France.

1941: The BBC adopted the opening four notes of Beethoven’s 5th Symphony as a Morse message of victory to give hope to Nazi-occupied Europe.

1945: Charter establishing United Nations was signed in San Francisco by 50 nations.

1954: The world’s first atomic power station, at Obninsk near Moscow, went into production.

1967: Britain’s first cash dispenser was opened by Barclay’s Bank in Enfield.

1971: The first national Scrabble competition was held in London and won by a teacher, Stephen Haskell.

1982: Israel called for surrender of 6,000 Palestinian guerrillas trapped in West Beirut as death toll of invasion reached 10,000 Lebanese and Palestinians.

1990: The European Commission ordered British Aerospace to repay £44.4 million of “sweeteners” tied to the sale of the Rover Group.

1991: Tanks and helicopters clashed in first fighting of Yugoslav civil war as federal army units invaded Slovenia.

1993: The US launched a missile attack on Iraqi intelligence posts in Baghdad in retaliation for an alleged plot to assassinate President George Bush. Eight people died.

1996: Actor Hugh Grant was arrested in Hollywood and charged with indecent conduct with a prostitute in a public place.

1996: John McCallion, MP, resigned from Labour’s front bench in protest over the party’s proposed referendum on a Scottish Parliament.

2007: On his first day as prime minister after taking over from Tony Blair, Gordon Brown promised a “politics of change”, made sweeping Cabinet changes in which the health secretary, Patricia Hewitt, and the foreign secretary, Margaret Beckett, lost their jobs, and started a radical reorganisation of Whitehall.

2009: Two Northern Ireland loyalist paramilitary groups announced they had completed decommissioning. The UVF and Red Hand Commando said their weapons and explosives were “totally and irreversibly beyond use”.

2012: The Queen and Northern Ireland’s deputy first minister Martin McGuinness shook hands for the first time. The meeting took place during the monarch’s two-day visit to Northern Ireland as part of her Diamond Jubilee tour.